Book excerpt: Melvin Mouron Belli ( July 29, 1907 - 9 July, 1996) was a prominent American lawyer known as "The King of Torts" and by detractors as 'Melvin Bellicose'. He had many celebrity clients, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, Sirhan Sirhan, Jim Bakker, the Rolling Stones, and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha Mitchell, Lana Turner, Tony Curtis, and Mae West. He won over USD $600,000,000 in judgments during his legal career. Belli was born in the California Gold Rush town of Sonora, California in the Sierra foothills. His father was born in Nevada of Italian Swiss ancestry, and his mother was born in California of French-German Swiss ancestry. By the 1920s, the family had moved to the city of Stockton, California where Belli attended Stockton High School. Belli graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1929 and after traveling around the world for a year, enrolled in and subsequently graduated from Boalt Hall School of Law.